Who is Negative Woman, Doom Patrol’s OTHER Spirit Host?

Warning: The following feature contains SPOILERS for Doom Patrol season 2, episode 6, “Space Patrol.”

The latest episode of Doom Patrol season 2 introduced the character of Valentina Vostok, the Russian aviator and spy who briefly joined the team as Negative Woman. The series offered a dramatically different take on the heroine, however, giving her an entirely new origin story that parodied her roots.

Throughout the Cold War era, many American science fiction series and comic books built around an ensemble contained a token Russian character, who was meant to symbolize how humanity would move beyond base political and national concerns in the future or how the drive for justice was not limited to any one nation. Ensign Pavel Chekov from the original Star Trek is the most famous example of this phenomena, but characters like Black Widow in The Avengers and Rocket Red from Justice League International also exemplify the trope. In the case of Valentina Vostok, she was introduced into the second incarnation of the Doom Patrol to fill this role.

The Doom Patrol series’ take on Negative Woman also pays tribute another trope that fueled the original Doom Patrol comics and the genre fiction of the time; the team of adventurers with a lone female member. The Fantastic Four are probably the best-remembered example of this today, but the number of teams built around the combination of at least one tough guy, one smart guy and a woman are almost uncountable today. Most modern versions of this sort of team usually subvert the cliche by having the woman be the most powerful and/or intelligent member of the team and this is certainly true of Doom Patrol‘s take on Valentina Vostok, who bonded with a Negative Spirit and found a level of power and peace Larry Trainor could only dream of achieving.

Negative Woman’s Origins In The Comics

Valentina Vostok first appeared in Showcase #94 in August 1977. Valentina was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Soviet Air Force and a Cosmonaut, who had stolen an experimental Russian jet and defected to the United States. While she was able to escape Russian air space safely, her plane malfunctioned and she crash landed on a remote island; the same island where the first incarnation of the Doom Patrol fought their final battle against Madame Rouge and General Zahl. The Negative Spirit that once inhabited Larry Trainor’s body apparently chose Valentina to be its new host, but this was later revealed to be the result of Dr. Niles Caulder’s machinations rather than random chance.

Along with Celsius and Tempest, Valentina was one of the new recruits who formed a new Doom Patrol team along with Cliff “Robotman” Steele, who was later revealed to have survived the fight that was thought to have destroyed the original Doom Patrol. Valentina entered into a romantic relationship with Tempest, but she ended it after her powers changed to become more like those of Larry Trainor, requiring that she wrap her body in special lead-lined bandages to prevent her from lethally radiating those around her. Later, when Larry Trainor was resurrected, the Negative Spirit abandoned Valentina to take refuge in his body once again and Negative Woman was left powerless.

Despite this, Valentina did not retire from the world of superheroes. She went on to work for a variety of American intelligence organizations, eventually falling in with The Agency; a special branch of Task Force X and the Suicide Squad exclusively devoted to global operations. Volstok was also a founding member of the international peacekeeping organization Checkmate, where she eventually replaced Suicide Squad founder Amanda Waller as the White Queen, co-leader of Checkmate’s intelligence operations.

Negative Woman’s Powers and Skills In The Comics

As Negative Woman, Valentina Vostok was a host to the Negative Spirit; a being of pure energy capable of flight and intangibility, which could generate minor explosions and electrical discharges as it came into contact with positive matter. Early in her career as a superhero, Valentina transformed herself into a being made up of negatively-charged energy, apparently merging her own body with that of the Negative Spirit. Later, her powers evolved (or devolved, from her perspective) so that she released the Negative Spirit from her body and could control it for up to one minute, just like Larry Trainor had done when he was Negative Man.

Even with the loss of her superpowers, Valentina Vostok was a formidable figure and one of the few people that Amanda Waller seemed to respect.  Vostok was a highly trained soldier, a skilled pilot, a brilliant tactician and a master spy on par with Black Widow. While she largely worked behind the scenes after joining Task Force X and later Checkmate, she could hold her own in a fight when pressed into action.

Negative Woman In Doom Patrol

Doom Patrol season 2, episode 6, “Space Patrol” introduced Valentina Vostok as one-third of the Pioneers of the Uncharted; three adventurers brought together by “benevolent genius Niles Caulder” to pilot an experimental spaceship called the Icarus “on a three generation mission into the deepest reaches of the unknown.” As was typical of most of Caulder’s experiments, the launch of the Icarus had an ulterior motive and he had intended for the Pioneers of the Uncharted to track down a being made of cosmic radiation he believed could hold the key to immortality while simultaneously exploring deep space. While the voyage saw the two male Pioneers, Zip and Specs, become infected by some kind of space spore that took over their bodies and left them acting like parodies of their former selves (who could only repeat the same cliched lines of dialogue over and over) Valentina “Moscow” Vostok became an entirely new life form.

Valentina made contact with the energy being during a spacewalk and bonded with it, eventually achieving symbiosis with it after five years and becoming what Niles Caulder meant for Larry Trainor to become; an immortal gestalt entity that was both Valentina Volstok and the Negative Spirit, without any negative side-effects. This revelation gave the normally depressive Larry one more thing to be upset about, as he had spent the last 60 years trying to cope with the Negative Spirit within him only to just recently start making progress toward achieving some degree of understanding with it. This all seems to be foreshadowing Larry’s eventual fate in the Doom Patrol comics where he and the Negative Spirit bonded with Dr. Eleanor Poole to form a new entity called Rebis, who was composed of all three beings. Rebis would later play a major role in defeating the Candlemaker, who is the main villain of Doom Patrol season 2, but it remains to be seen if Larry will find the peace he’s sought for so long before the season’s end or what role Negative Woman might play in the fight to come.

About The Author

Matt Morrison
(1836 Articles Published)

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Matt Morrison has been writing about comics since before the word
“blogging” was coined. He got his start writing for the
legendary DC Comics digital fanzine Fanzing,
before receiving his own column, The Mount. Since then he has gone on
to write for over a dozen websites, including 411
Mania, Comics
Nexus and The Cult of Nobody. He holds both an MS in Information
Science from the University of North Texas and a BFA from the
University of Texas at Arlington. Known as a font of comic book
history trivia, he has delivered lectures on the history of American
Comic Books, Japanese Manga, Doctor Who, and Cosplay at over a dozen conventions
and served as an Expert In-Residence for a course on Graphic Novels
for Librarians at the University of North Texas. In addition to his
work for Screen Rant, Matt is currently the Editor In Chief of
Kabooooom.com and writes reviews for No
Flying, No Tights – a graphic literature and anime review site
aimed at teachers and librarians. He also maintains a personal blog –
My Geeky Geeky Ways –
which hosts his extensive episode guide for the television series
making up The Arrowverse as well as his
comedic Let’s Play videos. What little spare time he has is
devoted towards acting, role-playing, movie-riffing and sarcasm. You
can follow his adventures on Twitter, @GeekyGeekyWays.

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